Have you heard? My new book Continuous Discovery Habits is now available. Get the product trio's guide to a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery. Working as a product trio is the foundation for discovery. Without input from a product manager, a designer, and an engineer, it’s difficult for us to account for the cross-functional perspectives we need to build successful products.
However, most companies tend to have more engineers than product managers or designers. This creates some confusion when it comes to forming product trios. Which engineers should participate in trios? It can be especially difficult to answer this question when the members of an engineering team have different levels of seniority. Should it always be the most senior engineer who joins the trio?
In this edition of Ask Teresa, I address a common question and concern: Which engineer should participate in the trio? And what exactly do we mean when we use the word “lead” to describe members of the product trio?
Ask Teresa: Does the engineer in a product trio need to be the tech lead?
In the past, I’ve sometimes used language like “design lead” or “tech lead” to refer to the design and engineering members of the trio. However, over time I’ve realized that this language can be confusing. The term “lead” is vague. Sometimes it refers to someone’s seniority within the company, and at other times it refers to their authority and autonomy for a given project.
In fact, the product team at Ramsey Solutions shared how using the term “engineering lead” caused confusion and even discouraged engineers from participating in the trio. Some of them believed it would be a promotion that would give them seniority over other engineers. And others worried that becoming the tech lead would force them to focus too much on discovery and prevent them from progressing in their engineering careers.
So let’s take a closer look at what I mean by the term “tech lead” and how you can apply this to your own team.
Understanding a Typical Product Trio
For most teams, the product trio is going to consist of a product manager, a designer, and an engineer. In most instances, the designer will be the design lead for that team and the engineer will be the engineering lead for that team.
What do I mean by lead? If the cross-functional team has more than one designer assigned to it, then it’s typically the more senior designer who participates in the product trio. If the team has more than one engineer (which is often the case), then it’s typically the most senior engineer on the team who participates in the product trio.
If a team has more than one engineer (which is often the case), then it’s typically the most senior engineer on the team who participates in the product trio. – Tweet This
In this context, “lead” does not mean manager or director. It is not expected (nor is it the norm) for the other designers on the team to report to the design lead nor for the other engineers on the team to report to the engineering lead.
Rather, the product trio is our core decision-making team. They lead product discovery. They are responsible for deciding what to build (with appropriate input from the rest of the team, of course). So it’s natural that the more senior people on the team are part of this group.
However, sometimes this doesn’t work for engineering. Our more senior engineer might be most interested in system architecture, code reviews, and mentoring other engineers. Discovery might keep them from the activities they are most interested in.
The most senior engineer might be most interested in system architecture, code reviews, and mentoring other engineers. Discovery might keep them from the activities they are most interested in. – Tweet This
Technically, we could run into the same case with the design lead. After all, senior designers also have to manage design systems, conduct design critiques, and mentor more junior designers. However, designers want to be involved in discovery more often than not, whereas this is not as commonly the case with engineers.
In both cases, it doesn’t have to be the lead who participates in the product trio. Suppose the engineering lead or the design lead would rather not participate in discovery. What can the team do to still have an engineer or designer participate in discovery?
When the Lead Doesn’t Want to Participate in the Product Trio
It is possible for another designer or engineer to take on this role. But a couple of things need to be in place for this to work well:
First, the lead (either engineering or design) needs to acknowledge that they are giving up their product discovery role. In other words, it should be up to them to choose not to take this role. And as part of doing so, they are giving up their seniority when it comes to discovery decisions.
That sounds simple in theory, but it can be quite complex in practice. Suppose a product trio decides to move forward with a particular solution. The engineering lead (who did not participate in discovery) reviews it and raises a concern about its impact on the overall system architecture and torpedoes the idea. The team just wasted their discovery efforts.
Second, the engineer who participates in discovery needs to communicate early and often with the engineer who will sign off on system architecture, data model, and other infrastructure decisions. This should be part of the process of evaluating the feasibility of a solution. This is why it’s easiest when the tech lead is the engineer in the trio.
But if that’s not possible, a team can still get by with another engineer in the trio, as long as that engineer takes responsibility for fully vetting feasibility and getting buy-in from the rest of the engineering team as they work through assumption testing for the ideas that they are considering.
The same two criteria must be in place for a design lead who allows another designer to participate in the product trio. The design lead must be willing to give up the role and the designer who fills the role must communicate continuously with the design lead to make sure they stay aligned.
There is some additional overhead when the engineering lead or the design lead doesn’t participate in the product trio. But as long as another engineer or designer steps in to fill the role, it can work—as long as all parties are willing to do their parts to make it happen.
There is some additional overhead when the engineering lead or the design lead doesn’t participate in the product trio. But as long as another engineer or designer steps in to fill the role, it can work. – Tweet This
For a real-world example of why an engineering lead might not want to participate in discovery, check out our recent Product in Practice article about how engineers rotate in and out of the product trio at Ramsey Solutions.
